Health kick = temporary blindness.

I was a water child. Back in those glory days of being a kid my parents would get a family season ticket to the local pool. I could get to it in a minute and a half on my bike, and was always trying for a better time. My aim was for under a minute. I can remember that ride so well…

towel on the shoulder
down the drive out the gate through the big ditch in the spot where you won’t get bogged jump the gutter onto the footpath on the bridge and belt it down the other side
pick your timing through the traffic on the highway belt up the hill and ditch the bike at the top on the fly sending it skidding across the dark concrete that burns your feet into the corner of the walls
up the steps throw your towel to the left as you go through the gate and launch yourself at the water

I would do this every afternoon. Sometimes there would be nobody else but me and the lifeguard, but I could fuck about in the water for hours on end, doing the things that kids do. Making up games, trying to sit on the bottom for as long as I could, swimming lengths of the pool with my breath held. Once a week there was a swimming club for kids and we’d spend the afternoon doing laps. I was so at home in the water. Goggles? Like hell! I did everything in the chlorinated water with my eyes open and it didn’t hurt a bit. Goggles were for old people, or the weak who couldn’t handle it. Maybe the chlorine is a factor in the deterioration of my sight. I hadn’t discovered the need for glasses at the time – that was later into teenagerdom.

Despite the activity I was a lard of a kid, and as I got into highschool the typical peer teasing caused me to stop liking going to the pool. I just wasn’t strong enough in personality to say fuck you, I want to swim, not pose. I avoided swimming in sport as much as possible (difficult because the school was right next to the pool I described earlier, and the entire summer program was spent at the local pool doing lifesaving) and because the popular group were all beach bunnies I avoided being seen on the beach like the plague. I hated the idea of going there just in case they’d see me and say something.

It’s taken twenty-seven years to say fuck you, I want to swim and now I’m in search of it. Yesterday I went to an ocean baths to chuck on some laps – part of the getting fit and healthy attitude that tends to pair with summer and nice days. I don’t often spend much time in the water any more, but all those old growing up habits are right there. I pulled a few laps of the baths, getting more and more comfortable with my stroke and breathing patterns. Then I opened my eyes under the water.


That’s when I had the realisation that no, I am no longer a kid in that small town pool so close to my parents’ home.

This was an ocean baths, meaning salt water.
ouch, DAMMIT
Since the deterioration of my sight, I have been a habitual contact lens wearer.
Oh shit, I’m blurry on the right hand side. DAMMIT

It would have been a funny sight, this chick in a pool by the ocean tipping her head all angles, poking about the edges of her right eye trying to find if a lens got washed into the back of it. DAMMIT. I don’t carry glasses in the car with me – I try to ignore their existence as much as possible – so I had to drive away with double vision, blurry on one side.

It’s time to get old, and go buy some goggles.